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These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.

Dead Rising 2

Randy from 'Here Comes the Groom' is all but stated to be a furry. He's morbidly obese, is wearing a hood with dog ears and pants with a tail, a too-small latex shirt, and the notebook description calls him an insecure virgin who's addicted to internet sex. He tries to forcibly marry a woman by holding her and his father, a minister, hostage with a giant pink chainsaw that he revs and thrusts a lot.

The redneck psychopaths are every single "AMERICA BAD" stereotype crammed into a two-minute cutscene.

Like many Zombie flicks, Dead Rising seems to carry an aesop about humanity in general, specifically about the selfish actions of America in the modern age. In the second game, it focuses mainly on our greed for money. After all, what better place to serve such a message then a expy of Las Vegas. All around you see normal people more worried about money then helping each other and even the final bosses of both games claim to be doing it for good, when in reality it's just so they can gain more profits. Like the zombies, only they hunger for cash instead of flesh.

While not one of the easier bosses, Boykin can feel quite easy due to coming after the Twins and before Sullivan.

The two scientists fought in Case 7-2 are a much better example. Although their gunshots can be annoying if you're trying to take them out with melee weapons.

Broken Aesop: The whole Humans Are the Real Monsters kinda falls apart when you see plenty of humans not wanting anything to do with the zombies or anything materialistic, instead just wanting to leave Fortune City. Meanwhile, every zombie wants to eat whatever living (or recently deceased) meat they can find and don't discriminate who or what their target is.

Catharsis Factor: Tons of enemies to dispatch in creative ways with over-the-top weapons? When it comes to this, DR2 is perhaps only rivaled by Dynasty Warriors.

Tons of different ways to dispatch zombies, each one crazier and the next... but if you ask around, most players will just craft either the knifegloves, the chainsaw paddles and/or the Defiler (fire axe + sledgehammer) and be done with it.

Also, there are many different ways to take on the psychopaths, but most people just bring a Sniper Rifle, Six-Shooter, and Knife Gloves to every fight.

Complete Monster: Tyrone "TK" King, the host and producer of the controversial reality show Terror Is Reality where contestants slaughter zombies for sport. TK eventually allows his zombies to run rampant in the city to create an outbreak and frames Chuck Greene for it, so TK could rob the casinos' now empty vaults. After suffering a zombie bite of his own, TK begs Chuck for a shot of the zombie virus suppressing drug Zombrex. When Chuck complies, TK repays him by holding Chuck's daughter and friend hostage and tries to lower them to be devoured by zombies while trying to kill Chuck himself. He's also implied by his own words to not be aboverape.

Demonic Spiders: Late in the game, a type of zombie appears that's far more aggressive, durable, and damaging. In numbers, they can easily surround and kill you. Those weapons that were game-breakers before? You'll need them just to survive!

Ensemble Darkhorse: Cameron Welch, one of the survivors Bibi Love is holding hostage, is rather popular among the fanbase simply for his funny lines during the ordeal.

Even Better Sequel: The first game was a unique sandbox game with RPG Elements, and good variety of weapons. Dead Rising 2 vastly improved upon it by tweaking the AI, Giving us a much more interesting protagonist with a better (if a bit cliched) motivation, putting even more zombies on the screen, replacing photography with combo weapons, giving an even bigger and more creative variety of weapons, and incredibly fun online Multiplayer and co-op.

Foe Yay: Chuck and Leon. Leon's insistence that he's better than Chuck seems a little obsessive, but it doesn't help that in "Meet The Contestants" he bets Chuck is totally hot for him. Throw in that he throws Chuck's bike keys on the ground and watches him bend over for them (plus the fact you can be wearing skimpy clothes at the time) and it's almost like he has a severe crush on him.

Terror Is Reality. Incredibly fun in and of itself, but the imbalance occurs when it comes to prize money. Every competitor receives at least a small reward, and when it is taken into a single player playthrough it allows the player to buy Zombrex quite easily.

Once you have killed Seymour and obtained his Six-Shooter (which respawns in the South Plaza every time you run out of ammo), you have officially beaten every boss in the game. It holds a whopping sixty rounds, does great damage, has a decent firing rate, and is very accurate. Even The Twins, Dwight Boykin, and Sullivan can be killed easily with just the revolver.

There is a book up in the giant octopus/jellyfish light fixture thing of Atlantica Casino that will allow Chuck to drink as much booze as he wants without having to drop his weapon and puke his guts out every few seconds. Combine that with the book that makes food heal more health and you now have an easily accessible supply of health wherever you go. This is also a bonus in the Sports Pack Pre-order bonus, which also gives Chuck an instant speed bonus.

The no-puking effect also carries over to spoiled food, although Chuck will still puke upon eating it.

The Leadership Magazine pretty much cuts the difficulty of escorting survivors in half, if not more. Aside from making all survivors following you twice as tough, it turns the game's resident joke character into the most powerful survivor in the game.

Dynameat nets you a ton of PP per kill, even without its combo card. Throwing it in a crowd of zombies can gain you about as much as saving one survivor, and you can make one as soon as the game starts (Random zombies usually carry a hunk of meat but they tend to spawn in the corridor with the maintenance room and gem store, dynamite can be found on top the palm tree by the Royal Flush exit) and can be applied immediately for some nice level jumping (there's always a crowd of zombies by the exit, either Royal Flush or Americana).

The Defiler (Sledgehammer + Fire Axe) is easy to acquire the reagents for, can be obtained very early on and absolutely wrecks any zombie it touches. Sure, it's molasses slow, but this is a moot point when you can bat away crowds of zombies with it.

It is possible to carry items into Co-Op by joining a game session directly from a single-player session. Doing so allows you to duplicate items, the most beneficial of which are bargaining magazines which give a % decrease to the cost of items in the pawn shop. Duplicating enough of them drives the price into the negative numbers which means the looters will pay you to take things off their hands.

Another similar one involving a crappy connection and durability magazines. Randomly disconnecting while you have a durability magazine in your hand, saving, and then coming back can cause the durability effect to stack. Do this enough times and any combo weapon you build covered under the durability magazine will be infinite.

There's one particularly funny bug where after Sullivan reveals himself as a Phenotrans agent, if you search around the safehouse, you can find him crying in a corner, like many other day 3 survivors.

Hilarious in Hindsight: You know that commercial where Michael Bay pronounces everything "awesome"? He starts off by calling a tiger an "awesome pussycat". Not only can Chuck give Snowflake the tiger to Katey as a gift, she says, "That was an AWESOME gift!"

The "voices" of female survivors Cinda and Tammy, as well as a couple of other young female survivors which share the same sound bank. It becomes especially evident when you're fighting Antoine, as Cinda does nothing but constantly whine and complain throughout the entire fight.

Danni's crying during the fight with Randy can get incredibly annoying really fast as well, especially if you have trouble beating him.

Katey and Stacey's screams during the fight against TK get rather annoying as well.

Bibi Love's black hostage, Cameron Welch. He's completely calm, even if you screw up the minigame and get him killed and delivers two of the most amusing lines in the game. He also looks a bit like Barack Obama, which is his Fan Nickname.

Katey's need for Zombrex forces players to drop whatever they're doing and search frantically for Zombrex (or smash slot machines to buy some from a looter) and run to the safehouse, praying the time doesn't run down, to administer it themselves. Getting there too early will force Chuck to wait, despite the fact he could easily hand it off to Stacey or the pharmacist - the very first one he rescues, and a paramedic - to inject it themselves while he's gone. Rather justified, having seen some of the lunacy the relatively sane survivors are capable of, it's not very likely that Chuck is willing to trust anyone else to actually give his daughter her dosage, or at least do it properly.

Certain Survivors later into the campaign with start twisting some nipples uncomfortably. At the start, it's easy to do, no problem. Later on, some will require something before they follow you. Again, at first, these are reasonable, such as giving a guy a gun to defend himself or to feed a guy something to "get his strength back". Later on, the requests get arbitrary and stupid. Three survivors won't leave until you beat them at poker with high dollar amounts, which wouldn't be so bad if you weren't constantly on the clock. As a result, your time is severely wasted trying to save some people.

The game's unwillingness to show dismembered or otherwise damaged models for still-living characters has a tendency to stick out during cutscenes, where they're implied to be shot in the head or torn in half from the waist but it's never shown, especially when it's contrasted with the degree of violence the zombies go through.

When TK shoots at Chuck on the train, his gun has no recoil or action, as if the muzzle flashes and sound effects were added in post.

Also notable is the fact that his finger is behind the trigger and isn't actually pulling it.

Strawman Has a Point: TK's show is all about catharsis and cash prizes. TiR and its premise is to mow down zombies that were once our loved ones for fabulous cash prizes. Conceptually, it's barbaric, but then you actually get to play the game itself, and while the message is there, the cash prizes available for Chuck to have in the main game is quite the incentive to go back and play it for more. Not to mention that the games are INSANELY fun. It becomes hard to argue against his point when you constantly play the games.

Sullivan has an incredibly overpowered uppercut that instantly reduces Chuck's health to the absolute lowest level (i.e. if anything else touches you, you die) making it by far the most damaging attack in the entire game. Sniper rifles, chainsaws, grenades, machine guns, swords, even aerial bombardment cannot compare to this attack.

Snowflake has that incredibly annoying grapple attack.

Chef Antoine has the "Apple choke" he does sometimes after knocking Chuck/Frank down. There are two main issues with this attack: 1) Antoine has an extremely fast frying pan bash that cannot be interrupted and knocks Chuck/Frank, and 2) the quicktime event is a harder version of Snowflake's grab and it will inevitably take one or two chunks of Life away, in the first playthrough three Life cubes is about 1/3 of the entire Life bar.

Dwight Boykin can pull off a melee combo where he'll whack you with the butt of his machine gun, throw you down to the ground, shoot you a bunch, then throw you. This whole combo takes off four blocks of health. This will leave you reeling if the Random Number God hasn't blessed you with plenty of health upgrades.

And of course, the redneck snipers, well, sniping you. Each shot takes off two blocks of health and knocks you back, and they almost never miss. This can be gotten around through effective use of the Roll, however.

Just about any boss that won't go to pieces from a Laser Sword beaming can be Swiss-cheesed with Sniper Rifle fire. Even TK will go down to repeated applications of a convenient cordless drill or Cement Saw.note Perhaps a Shout-Out to Total Recall (1990)? "Teeekayyy!! Schklew Ewe!!"Sullivan, however, will make you tear your hair out. You have to wade through a sea of zombies to get to him, wasting life and healing items. You fight him on a small platform atop a sea of zombies, and if you use any melee weapon on him, he'll grab it in mid-swing and use it to toss you into them, and all the time a passing plane is firing explosives at you. Which blow holes in the floor that you can fall into, forcing you to wade through even more zombies. If you choose to start shooting at him, he'll give just as good as he gets, and chances are his health will outlast your ammo - forcing you to resort to Good Old Fisticuffs - and given that most people bought the game explicitly to play around with the combo weapons, the Unexpected Gameplay Change to Fighting Game will slaughter you. Over and over again.

People tend to shudder at the mention of Crystal and Amber as well. To put it bluntly, these two are a Dual Boss with swords and a complete disregard for the Mook Chivalry code. To not put it bluntly, they will constantly gang attack you and run away so that you can't fight back, often leaving you several health blocks lighter. They aren't afraid to hurl taunts and insults at you either.

Values Dissonance: Unlike the Umbrella Corporation, which can just claim to be evil for the hell of it, the whole thing of Phenotrans being willing to withhold lifesaving medicine in order to make money comes off as really strange to countries where healthcare is a subsidized government service.

Dead Rising 2: Case West

Frank and Chuck during the game. A guy who can make a weapon out of anything and a guy who's covered wars team up and slice, shoot and pummel their way through waves of the undead to search for the truth.

And the ending, too. Chuck, despite butting heads with Frank a few times, returns the Zombrex Frank trashed out of anger when Frank realizes it's time for his dose.

One cutscene features Chuck and Frank sitting in the Shipping Office, with Chuck repeatedly clicking a pen to Frank's chagrin. Eventually Frank has enough and throws the pen into a wall. Chuck then delivers one of the best lines in Case West.

The Laser Gun, Impact Blaster and Reaper are extremely effective in the final battle and against hazard units. In singleplayer mode, the weapons you give Frank last as long as if you were using them, due to it being meant for co-op play.

The Laser Gun is also extremely effective in crowds of zombies, as it lets out an explosion if you shoot someone. It can gain PP very quickly and you get 20 shots with each one. It requires combining two other combo weapons to make one, but it's well worth it.

Goddamned Bats: Security officers with guns are everywhere. You need your own guns and some food on hand all the time.

Scrappy Mechanic: Certain combo weapons are only fully effective when playing as Frank. As you can only play as Frank if you join a co-op game, this means that it's unlikely that you'll be able to experience that. Other combo weapons are only effective when playing as Chuck, but that's not nearly as annoying.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record

Broken Base: Over which protagonist's version of the story fans prefer, Chuck's, or Frank's?

Game Breaker: All the stuff that broke the game in the original version is back for this one, along with:

Sandbox mode. All a player has to do is make a save, play this mode for a couple of hours to get money and PP, and they shouldn't have any worry in the world.

Frank's Camera is also one this time around, since it doesn't have to constantly get new batteries anymore. Meaning one can get tons of easy PP by taking pictures.

There's a DLC pack called "The Gamebreaker Pack", which is filled of all kinds of Capcom-endorsed cheats, including God Mode, infinite ammo/durability, and the ability to change the time limits.

Goddamned Bats: The sleeper zombies lying on the floor or staring at walls, who teleport into a grapple accompanied by a Scare Chord. The floor ones are easy to avoid, jump over, or preemptively attack, but the wall ones spawn behind blind corners and closed doors and inside safe areas like Maintenance Rooms and bathrooms. They're infrequent enough to lull the player into complacency and a Jump Scare. On the bright side, if you shake them off fast enough, they do little to no damage at all.

Arguably the fact that Katey dies in Off The Record. Made worse by the fact that her daddy's gone Psycho and is now a boss fight.

Even worse, going into Chuck's room during the outbreak Frank will remark loudly that it's not a place for a kid. Looking around you find a certain backpack with blood around it and a small handprint in blood on a nearby mirror.

Scrappy Mechanic: Mainly averted, as Off the Record removes many of the annoying issues that players had with Dead Rising 2. Frank can inject Zombrex anywhere, and doesn't need to return to the Safe House each time (since there's no Katey waiting there for it). Stacey's messages are now fully voiced and broadcast over a wireless earpiece, so you can listen to them without interrupting combat. Finally, and probably most significantly, they actually added a checkpoint system that saves every time you change locations, so you don't end up losing an hour or so of gameplay if you get killed.

The Untwist: Instead of Chuck being framed for the outbreak, a member of CURE is shown starting the outbreak. Stacey proclaims CURE is innocent the entire game and Frank must clear their name. But, no. CURE is a tool used by Phenotrans to get misguided activists to start outbreaks. Stacey herself is a Phenotrans plant who organizes them to do this. They were fully as guilty as they appeared to be. Your Mileage May Vary in if this makes more sense than the original game's plot or not.

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